Fidwog Bensa Maintenance

Field Maintenance

The FOD's supply situation had been described by Syrnol Hafren as "challenging" in his first report home, "serious" in his second, and "irrelevant, since nobody is reading these anyway" in the third. What the FOD had when the resupply stopped was what the FOD had. The question was how long they could make it last.

The scrounging operation ran alongside the fighting operation with equal seriousness. Creevish allies contributed what they could, which was sometimes considerable and sometimes nothing, depending on which southern lord controlled which supply route that week. Battlefield recovery became standard practice. The crates that arrived at FOD positions had frequently changed hands two or three times before reaching their final destination, their original markings painted over or pried off entirely. Nobody asked where the crates came from. 

What the FOD had not anticipated, and what their official reports home never quite captured, was how the supply situation changed the character of the force. Units that had arrived as a conventional expeditionary army were becoming leaner, more adaptive and more territorial about their equipment. Every weapon was maintained with a care that bordered on affection. Every ammunition belt was loaded with the attention of someone who knows there isn't another coming. The FOD was, by 1782, fighting a different war than the one they'd sailed to fight.